Cluster Printing Upgrade Adds Color Printing Capabilities with Konica’s 7920 and 7915 WINDSOR, Conn. – June 10, 2002 – Konica Business Technologies, Inc. (Konica), the innovation leader in digital imaging solutions and a subsidiary of Konica Corporation, recently announced the availability of Unify Konica 2.0 from Advanced Hi-Tech Corporation (AHT), a new digital cluster printing server for high-volume B&W and color output. The Unify Konica 2.0 server connects multiple devices via a network or direct cable connection, bringing increased productivity, enhanced versatility, and cost-effective document management to multiple environments and customer types. With Unify Konica 2.0, a single Konica 7920 or 7915 Color Imaging System can now be added to the cluster, providing the ability for users to output jobs that contain both B&W and color pages. The B&W pages are sent to the Konica 7075 or FORCE 75 and the color pages to the Konica 7920/7915. A blank or printed sheet is inserted into the B&W document that represents where the color pages should be inserted. "Combining a total of up to ten 7075, FORCE 75 and 7920/7915 machines in one cluster gives our customers the flexibility they need to streamline their workflow and increase productivity, while optimizing their system and operator productivity," said Kevin Kern, vice president, product development and support, Konica Business Technologies, Inc. "The explosion of color documents as an everyday business tool has necessitated the ability to incorporate color as part of a high-volume printing system, and the addition of the 7920/7915 to Unify Konica meets those demands." Unify Konica 2.0 is targeted for central reprographic departments (CRD), print-for-pay, networked offices and production print environments. Besides clustering, standard features include: multiple copy splitting, document splitting, load balancing, color and B&W splitting, automatic job recovery, electronic collation, priority printing, intelligent scheduling, archiving, and scanning. In addition, Unify Konica 2.0 utilizes a network connection that enables the system to successfully eliminate the distance boundaries between the server and connected printers. Specifically for the print-on-demand environment, Unify Konica 2.0 offers an optional Document Management Suite including: DocComposer, a document manipulation tool that allows you make changes to a document without changing the original file, especially beneficial for bookmaking; PageSetter, a full-featured imposition tool that provides users with pre-set and customizable templates that can transform a document into a booklet without altering the original files; and Vite technology, a variable data printing tool that enables users to incorporate variable text and images into any document for personalized output. Unify Konica 2.0 is a true "plug-and-play" solution built on Windows 2000 Server technology and offering dual 1.7 GHz Xeon processors with 512MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive. Once the server is installed and given an IP address, any client on that network can send print jobs through the browser-based interface, ensuring that all users can simultaneously view all pending jobs.